Wednesday, April 29, 2015

What Has Running Marathons Taught Me

Running a marathon isn’t just 26.2 miles.
That’s just the finish. Running a marathon is the hundreds and even
thousands of miles and months of hard training leading up to that 26.2
mile finish. They say that the person who crosses the
finish line at a marathon is not the same person who started running
it. “What does that mean?” you may be wondering. Well, let me see if I
can explain what it means to me.

When I started training for my first marathon
last August, it was 16 weeks before my marathon. I later found out that
some people opt to train for 20-22 weeks for a marathon, but 16 is kind
of, sort of a minimum time frame to adequately
train yourself to be ready to tackle 26.2 miles in one go. I had just
come off a one month running hiatus and was going straight into marathon
training. I had settled on running 5 days a week. Going from nothing
to running 5 days a week, even with the relatively
low mileage at the beginning of a training cycle, was really asking a
lot of myself. But, after a week or two I was in the swing of things
and it was smooth sailing. It was summer when I started and I live in
central Texas…so that means I was basically running
through hades…or around the rim of an active volcano…you get the idea.
To avoid running with the Texas summer sun beating down on me and
causing me to feel beat down, I opted to get up at 5:30am and run before
the sun came up so all I had to do was deal with
the humidity.

The first 2 things I discovered about myself
thanks to marathon training were A) I really like running regularly…I’m
so much happier when I run regularly and just in general feel better
about myself and my life; and B) even though I am
not a morning person, I love running before the sun comes up. There’s
just something about the still of the predawn time and then, of course,
there is getting to watch the sun peeking over the horizon. I just love
it. I feel more in tune and in touch with
myself and life when I run at that time of the day.

A couple months into training, I had my first
injury. It was an over-use injury too. I strained my calf. I was
running a 15 mile training run, my long run for that week. I was going
relatively slow. I mean, I hadn’t been doing any
kind of speedwork…no intervals, no Yasso’s, no fartleks, no tempo
runs…nothing. Also, I hadn’t been pushing my pace at all. So yea, I
was running slow. The first 5 miles, I was going about 12:30 per mile.
I was going to bump it up to 12 when I hit the
5 mile mark, but at 4.9 there was a twang in the inside area of my
right calf that felt like a string snapped. I immediately stopped and
sat down and started feeling on my calf for a bulge. I figured it was a
tear, but I felt nothing…except for pain like
fire, of course. But no bulge. As soon as I felt the twang and
stopped, I said “well, I’m not running 15 miles today.” I ran-limped
the 2.5 miles home. Probably a really bad idea but it was going to take
almost literally forever to walk-limp that same
distance home. I ended up at the ER later that day because the pain
didn’t lessen at all and I was afraid something serious had happened. A
$150 copay later, there were no tests performed and no ultrasound
done…all he did was run his thumb over the area
like I had already done and say “you just strained the muscle.” I
asked how long I should take off from running and he said “all I can
tell you is to avoid any activity that causes pain.” Gee, thanks doc.
He gave me a prescription for 600mg ibuprofen and
tramadol. I ended up taking 3 days off from running and then wore a
compression sleeve on my right calf whenever I ran, regardless the
distance, for a month.

What did I learn from this? I’m tougher than I
thought I was. I also deal with pain fairly well (I technically already
knew this part). While I was disappointed that I was injured and had
to take some time off, I was more concerned with
healing and preventing further injury than I was with keeping up with
my 5-day a week running schedule. So, I cut a day off my running
schedule and just adjusted the distances for each run so I didn’t lose
any mileage for the week. So, I learned that I deal
with setbacks without too much issue. I knew I still had 2 months
before the marathon at the time of this injury and as long as I played
my cards right, I could make it to the start line without further
injury.

By the time the day of the marathon rolled
around, I had noticed that my average mile pace was dropping. I had
shaved a minute off my average mile pace. My average mile was now
around 11:30 minutes instead of the 12:30-13:00 I had started
my training with. This made me believe that I really could run the
marathon within the 7 hour cutoff. I did the math and came up with 5:30
hours for a projected finish time.

From this I learned that even if you don’t do
any speedwork, consistency pays off. All that hard work, determination
and regular running had equaled a faster average pace for me! What I
take from this is that even when you think you’re
not making progress, you just might be! Don’t sell yourself short!

Overall, throughout the process, I learned so
much about myself. I learned that marathon training really does change
you. I think it changed me for the better. Before I started this
journey, I wasn’t really into challenging myself or
being challenged even slightly. Hence the no speedwork. But now?
Now, I’m all about challenging myself. I’m all about consciously making
progress and improving myself. Now I don’t just HOPE for a new PR, I
make it happen! I really like setting goals
and then working my butt off to reach and exceed them!